The Obama administration has committed to supplying the Free Syrian Army with small arms in the push to topple Bashar al Assad's brutal regime.
Still, its going to take months for these weapons to get to the rebels because of bureaucratic inefficiency and legislative resistance.
I think no one in the government really wants to get more involved in Syria. But because the President had declared that the use of chemical weapons was a 'red line' he was obligated to act.